Winspear
Winspear/Noisemother
Focusrite is firewire but good call on the others!
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How about DAW? I've used Sonar 8.5, it made me want to quit music. I have X1 right now, and I'm definitely not in love with it, its still a pretty confusing piece of crap.
I've heard good things about reaper, and there's all kinds of options out there. I need something simple, but powerful, and can make it easy to mix drums.
^ There are indeed. But I imagine he wants one with 8 preamps - that's where things get tricky. Not to say there aren't any in your list but I don't know any off my head.
Mixcraft is extremely easy to use. It will get you to understand alot of the terms associated with DAWs such as VSTs VSTi, Impulses, MIDI, etc. and will enable you to get better so when you buy protools or cubase or logic.. you'll know how to use all these things. Then you can be a badass like say nolly or misha mansoor, Ola englund..etc
I've been making electronic music for 10 years
I'm not too familiar with MIDI
Right now, I want a Presonus Firestudio. Lots of channels, lots of features, and well known for bad drivers.
Put your money elsewhere. Trust me I own one
Focusrite perhaps
"preamps is definitely a huge plus, and essentially are required.
I dont want to have to get another unit or two then run it into my interface."
Said preamps could be connected via digital connections.
You'd have an 8 channel preamp like the Octopre, connected via 8 line outs to an 8 line in USB interface. I.e. an interface that has 8 input connectors but not all of them being XLRs/preamps (note you can use line-in on XLR connectors too by plugging a jack cable into the middle of it bypassing the preamp stage)
That's the analogue route - but you can use the digital too if the preamp unit has A/D conversion. So the signal is digital before it even gets to the interface, using a digital out on the preamp into a digital in on the interface. There are several formats, I think SPDIF is 2 channel only. Can't remember ADAT. There are more and better.
So yes, if you can find an 8 XLR preamp with a good enough digital, and a USB interface with digital (I'm not sure how the input #s of the USB interface affects it! Do some research!) then you are good to go. But like you said, you don't want to get yet another unit!
We really need to start an anti-presonus drivers club. Like the Mesa owners club and whatnot.
Like "Musicians, Engineers and Producers against Presonus Drivers"